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| Rene Descartes |
Yesterday I managed to get myself in the middle of a heated discussion
with several of my colleagues over how learning takes place. It was a seminar
provided by my university for teachers who frequently teach freshmen. The idea
is to develop instructional strategies to meet the needs of these first year
students who have widely varying backgrounds and academic preparedness. At one
point I found myself positioned between a French language instructor, who also
happened to be French, and a philosophy instructor.
The philosophy teacher discussed some ways that he got his
students to read and think about philosophers like Plato and Kant. The French instructor
animatedly argued that the problem with American students is that they cannot
think critically about complex text because they have not been drilled in the
basics. The gist of the argument was that American teachers and parents coddle
their students too much, do not insist that they learn basic things in
language, reading and other topics through drill and therefore, cannot think
critically.
The philosophy instructor, looking for common ground, brought
up the name of the great French philosopher, Rene Descartes, and offered how he
was trying to get his students to read and understand the man who famously
said, “I think; therefore, I am.” Our French colleague would have none of it,
insisting that these students can’t think about Descartes because they have not
been drilled in his writings or in the grammar of their own language for that
matter. (I hope I am doing justice to the two professors’ arguments here, as
the words were flying quickly to and fro).
I jumped in and suggested that they were arguing over the
need for a frame of reference in critical thinking and that the real
disagreement was over whether this frame of reference was a necessary
prerequisite or something that was a part of the learning and critical thinking process.
This got me thinking about learning and critical thinking.
Certainly, you need to know “stuff” in order to think critically about “stuff.”
But does learning proceed in a linear fashion: first we learn that low level “stuff”,
and then we think about it on a higher level. I don’t think so. I think the two
go hand in hand. Let me cite an example.
About a year ago I started to write this blog with the
purpose of providing my thoughts on literacy instruction, something I felt I
already knew a great deal about after 45 years in the field. One of my earliest
blog readers suggested that I read Diane Ravitch’s blog to see what was
happening in public education and why teachers might be having difficulty
implementing what I suggested. At the time I really did not know much about the
corporate education reform movement. I had many concerns about the Common Core
approach to literacy instruction and I thought charter schools were the wrong
simple answer to a complex problem, but that was about it.
I read Diane’s blog. Then I read Anthony Cody and Valerie
Straus and Mercedes Schneider and Bruce Baker and Jonathan Pelto and EduShyster
and I became radicalized and a staunch advocate for public education through my
blog, which changed from a teacherly advice column, to an anti-corporate education
reform philippic.
I learned as I was going and my blog entries reflected my
learning up to that point and later entries were more informed than earlier ones
because I was learning more. What I believe I was doing, in the term coined by
literacy researcher, Frank Smith, was “reading like a writer.” Smith says that
there is entirely too much to learn about writing for it to be learned from
instruction, no matter how good. Students learn most of what they know about
writing by writing and reading. Reading in a special way. Reading like a
writer. I would add to that getting timely feedback on their writing from
teachers.
Because I was a practicing writer, I noticed things in what
I read in a special way. I was simultaneously gathering information and thinking
critically about that information. The two cannot be separated. My writing drove
my learning and my critical thinking.
Of course, some things about writing can be learned through
direct instruction: end punctuation, capitalization, punctuating dialogue. But most
of the “stuff” of writing we learn by writing and reading in this special way. “Stuff”
is acquired because we write.
Similarly for reading, we learn how to read, mostly, by engaged
reading. The trick is, of course, that word “engaged.” If our philosophy
instructor can get the students engaged in the reading of Descartes, the
students will learn “stuff” about Descartes. Again some introduction will be
necessary, some activation and building of background knowledge to get the
students engaged, but once engaged students can gain basic information and
begin to think critically about Descartes through the reading.
Essentially, of course, I am arguing from a constructivist
perspective: the idea that students “construct” their understandings in the
process of listening, reading and writing about a topic. For this perspective I
borrow from not only Frank Smith, but Piaget, Vygotsky and Louise Rosenblatt
among others. My French instructor colleague was taking a more behavioral approach;
first learn the basics and then you can apply that knowledge to higher order
thinking.
The behavioral approach has informed much of the periodic “back
to basics” movements of the past 50 years. In reading this usually takes the
form of a heavy emphasis on phonics, the basics of reading if you will, before
focusing on “real reading.” The approach ignores that students learn much about
what they know about phonics by reading for meaning in real reading situations
and by writing in an effort to communicate.
So call me an unreconstructed constructivist, if you will.
What does all this have to do with the classroom teacher in
today’s Common Core abused classroom. Just this: students mostly need to read
to get better at reading and mostly need to write to get better at writing.
The Common Core instructional format of “close reading” may
have a small place in overall reading instruction, but as it is presented by
Common Core promoters it is a model that relies heavily on teacher centered instruction
and teacher developed “text dependent questions.” We had another name for “close
reading” in the 1950s – skill, drill and kill.
In writing it appears to call for formulaic writing emphasizing
informational and persuasive writing. Not bad in itself, but when tied to
testing it may drive us away from student selected topics toward writing toward
the prompt. In fact, it is already doing so.
What do we lose with this type of instruction? Only student
engagement in their learning. And when we lose student engagement, we lose our
audience and the hope for developing the kind of critical thinkers we all seem
to desire.
Descartes said, “I think; therefore, I am.” I want our
students to say, “I read and write; therefore, I can think.”
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